The New Republic

The New Republic

On Our Cover: Elizabeth Warren as 'Being John Malkovich'

Creative director Dirk Barnett explains the thought process behind the cover of the latest issue of The New Republic.

We started off with the idea of a big photo of Senator Elizabeth Warren on the cover with a big, bold line on top like "The Next President of the United States," but quickly realized how lame that was. We needed, instead, to convey Warren's threat to Hillary Clinton in 2016 with cover that was, for readers who don't know or recognize Warren, more "commercial." Someone suggested a coverline like "Hillary's Nightmare" and executive editor Greg Veis had the idea of riffing off the Being John Malkovich movie poster. I hired designer Jacqueline Mellow, who I worked with at Newsweek, and we built the exact same image, but with Warren's face instead of Malkovich's.